Heaven Eyes (10 page)

“See?” I said.

“Aye. But somebody’s going to see it and they’re going to come and get us and it’s back to Maureen and the rest.”

“We could pull it out,” I said.

“We’ve got to get away.”

He glared at the raft.

“I’ll go without you,” he said.

He looked sideways at me.

“I will,” he said.

I saw the anger in his eyes. But I saw the fear as well. He needed me to tell him not to go. He needed me to tell him I’d leave Heaven Eyes and Grampa and come with him. Heaven’s words kept running through my head: You is my sister … You is my bestest friend … I couldn’t leave her alone in the printing works with Grampa. Part of me already loved her as a sister. I didn’t know how to say this to Jan.

“It was going to be our adventure,” he said. “Just you and me and the raft and the river. Then you let stupid
Mouse come. Then you let two stupid freaks put you under a spell!”

“Go on, then,” I said. “Go off on your own.”

Then I reached for his hand, but before I could touch him we heard footsteps behind us. The herring gulls swooped up into the sky. Grampa was stamping through an alley toward us. He had a carving knife in his hands. He held it high above his head. Its blade glittered in the sun. His face was red as blood beneath its creases of black. His eyes glared, filled with death.

January stepped in front of me. He gripped his own glittering knife in his raised fist.

“Come on, then!” he yelled. “Come on, old man!”

Heaven Eyes came running through the alleyways.

“No!” she yelled. “These is my friends, Grampa!”

She caught his shoulder. She wrapped her arms around him.

“Grampa! These is my friends that come in the moony night!”

He stood there panting. His eyes cleared. The knife dangled from his hands. Heaven Eyes clung to him and whispered desperately to him.

Jan kept his knife raised high. His body was tense, poised. His breath came in short deep gasps.

“Shame she come,” he hissed. “Could have finished it, here and now.”

Heaven Eyes turned Grampa away. She started to
lead him back through the alley. She kept turning. Her eyes pleaded with us not to go away.

“Knife in the heart,” said Jan. “Or in the throat, or in the guts. Easy.”

“You weren’t scared?”

“He’s an old man. He’s cracked. He wouldn’t have a chance.”

I was trembling. I wanted to run to Heaven Eyes and comfort her.

“We’ve seen it, though,” said Jan.

“What?”

He grabbed me by the shoulders and glared at me. He spat out the words one by one.

“He’s a bloody killer, Erin. This place is mad and evil. We have to go away.”

He dragged my face toward him. He narrowed his eyes.

“Why d’you want to stay when you know we could all die here?”

I chewed my lips and felt tears trickling on my cheeks.

“Don’t leave me,” I wanted to say. “Please don’t leave me, Jan.”

But I said nothing.

He pushed me away, jumped over the ancient quay, scrambled down the ancient ladder and leapt across the water onto the raft. He stood over the red curse while the river tugged at the tightly fastened rope. I watched
him, waited for him to sail away all alone and leave me all alone. But he didn’t untie it. He just stood there swaying with the movements of the water, his head filled with fury and dreams of freedom, and disappointment with me, his best friend.

I
TRIED TO SHOUT AT HIM
. “Jan! January!” But my voice was a hopeless whimper, and he didn’t turn. He’d given up on me. I left him and turned back to the dark alleyways, the dilapidated quays, the broken buildings, the ruins of the past, the place he said was mad, was evil, the place he said was death. I kicked my way through ancient litter and fallen rubble. The walls and ceilings creaked and groaned. Dust seethed all around me. Shadows shifted. Dark birds flapped above. Dangling doors led into pitch-black rooms and offices. The ground was cracked and potholed. In places it had simply fallen away, and yawning gaps showed cavernous cellars below. I imagined ghosts all around me, watching me, the ghosts of those who had worked here and filled the place with noise and light and life. I felt their
fingers touching me as I walked, heard their hollow breathing, their whispering, their sad laughter. I imagined beasts staring out at me from the deepest darkest places. I saw their eyes glittering, saw their raised claws glinting. They were creatures that had grown in darkness and desolation, mutant life-forms, half-dead and half-alive. They grabbed at me as I passed by, they hissed my name, they tried to drag me to them, tried to make me theirs. I kept walking, walking, walking. I walked through my own mind, through my memories and hopes and dreams. I kicked the litter, breathed the dust. I remembered walking down to the raft for the first time with January when we felt so light and free. We spun out onto the river and hugged each other. Freedom. Freedom. A new beginning. So how had we come so quickly to this dark dilapidated dangerous place? How had we been so quickly thrown apart? I saw him drifting alone downriver on the raft, drifting into the endless empty sea. I saw him raising his arms in joy. Freedom! he yelled. Freedom! I pushed through a dangling door. Darkness. I shuddered and groaned. I held my hands out in front of me and went deeper, deeper. I edged my way past the sad ghosts, came to an opening in the floor. I went down, down. Ancient crumbling steps. The stench of damp and rot and doom. I went down into the deepest darkness until there was nowhere left to go, just the furthest corner of the furthest cellar. I lay down in the slime.

“Mum,” I whispered.

No answer.

I found her hand resting in mine. Her hand grew colder, colder. I held it as she closed her eyes for the last time. I held it as she disappeared, as she left me all alone. It grew colder, colder.

“Why did you die?” I said to her. “Why? Why?”

No answer.

“Mum,” I whispered. “Mum. Please, Mum!”

No answer. Just her hand in mine. Just her cold, still, dead hand in mine.

I lay down at her side in silence. The cold and stillness entered my bones. I lay there in the slime as the mutants gathered around me. The scratch of their claws replaced my mum’s caressing touch. Their vicious hiss replaced her voice. I moved beyond words, beyond laughter, beyond tears. No hope. No joy. No life. Death grew all around and drew me in.

“E
RIN
L
AW
! E
RIN
L
AW
!”

Her voice echoed through the alleyways and the buildings and found its way through the dangling door, past the ghosts and mutants, into my deep darkness.

“Erin Law! Erin Law!”

It found its way into my head and called me back from silence, emptiness, deadness.

“Erin Law! Erin Law!”

I rubbed my face and felt the thick slime on my skin, in my hair. I retched and spat. I sat up and tried to call her but I only gasped and croaked.

“Erin Law! Erin Law!”

I stood up and tottered through the darkness with my hands held out in front of me, but I was sore and stiff and I stumbled and fell into the stony litter.

“Heaven!” I tried to shout. “Heaven!”

I crawled, but couldn’t tell if I was crawling to the light or deeper into the dark.

“Heaven!” I called. “Heaven Eyes!”

I wiped my face and tasted the blood that trickled from my hands.

“Heaven Eyes!”

“Erin Law!”

Her voice was closer, clearer. I strained to hear her footsteps through whatever walls and floors surrounded me.

“Where is you, Erin Law?”

I wiped tears from my eyes.

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

“I’m here!” I called. “Here I am!”

“Erin Law! Erin Law! Erin Law!”

I stumbled and crawled and tried to find the ancient stairway, tried to climb out of the stench of damp and doom. But crawled in useless circles, crawled to places where there were cracks and chasms in the floor, where there were more stairways heading down, openings to even deeper cellars. I felt the mutants’ fingers, urging me down. I heard their hiss. “Yes. Yesss. Further down. Further down.” I struggled with them. I tried to focus on Heaven Eye’s voice, but it was tiny, distant, something from another world. I told myself I was lost, never to be found, that I had gone too deep into impenetrable
dark, that no one could ever find me and help me out. “Further down,” the voices hissed. “Yes. Further down.” I stopped crawling. I held my mum’s hand again for the final time as she closed her eyes for the final time.

“Erin Law! Erin Law!”

The voice circled and searched and faded and grew and faded again and would not give up.

“Erin Law! Where is you, Erin Law?”

“I don’t know,” I wept.

I sobbed. I held my mum’s dead hand.

“I don’t know!” I called.

I lay down in the slime again. I felt the coldness entering my bones again.

“Here!” I called.

I closed my eyes. The voice circled and searched and circled and searched. I went back deep into my dark.

“Erin Law!”

It was closer.

“I eye you, Erin Law!”

I grunted.

“Keep still. Keep still as still.”

“What?”

“I eye you. Keep still and Heaven Eyes will come to you.”

I stared into the dark, saw nothing. Impossible to see anything in such deep deep dark. Heard the footsteps
in the litter coming nearer, heard her breath as she came nearer, heard the rustle of her clothes as she came nearer. But saw nothing. Then the touch of her fingers on my face.

“Oh my sister Erin Law! What is you doing in this deep deep dark?”

“I
DID TELL YOU
,” she said. “I did tell you there is holes in the ground where the darkness and the dangers is. You must watch out for them, my sister.”

She wiped the slime from my face with her gentle fingers.

“There is places to tumble out the world and not be found again,” she said. “You must watch out for them.”

We stood beyond the dangling door in the rubble and litter below a broken roof. She stroked my face. My eyes stung, adjusting to the light. My head reeled.

“What is this place?” I said.

No answer.

“What is it? Is it evil? Is it mad?”

“What is you mouthing, Erin Law?”

“What are you?” I whispered.

“I is Heaven Eyes, my sister.”

“What is Grampa?”

“He is my grampa, my sister.”

“What is this place?”

“Is the place of Heaven Eyes and Grampa, my sister.”

Birds sang and flapped through ruined rafters high above. Things sighed and slithered through the cellars below.

“Is it life?” I said. “Or is it death?”

She blinked, confused. She touched my face again.

“What is you been thinking of deep down there, my sister?”

She pushed a chocolate into my hand. I put it into my mouth and chewed.

“Sweet,” I told her.

“Sweetest thing of all.” She grinned. “Take more. Take more.”

“What can I ask that you can answer?”

She shrugged and smiled.